Fifty Years a Medium – Chapter 8, 2/10 by Estelle Roberts

But all was not over. Eschewing the use of the trumpet, Red Cloud’s voice again filled the room. “I have something for all of you,” he said. During the next two minutes he presented each sitter with a jewel, varying in size from tiny little brilliants to hexagonally cut pieces of onyx and jet measuring an inch-and-a quarter in length.

Gifts such as these are known as “apports.” They are highly treasured by those lucky enough to receive them, and were especially cherished on the present occasion as mementos of a particularly memorable evening.

Two or three years later at the House of Red Cloud, my guide again materialized in the presence of some twenty people. The séance began when I entered a small cabinet raised a few inches from the floor and having a curtain across its front. I took a red electric torch into the box with me, and as soon as I was seated the lights in the séance room were extinguished.

It was not long before Red Cloud was controlling me in deep trance and all heard him speaking in his characteristic voice. For a full description of what occurred I am indebted to Maurice Barbanell, who was present and who wrote this account in the Psychic News:

“I had a present from a spirit last week. Nearly twenty others had presents also.
Those who know very little of Spiritualism will read these words and smile. But this is not the first apport I have received.

Some years ago, at a direct voice séance, Red Cloud promised to bring me an apport. Last week, he redeemed the promise at his Wimbledon center.
The occasion was rather a special one. Once a year, Red Cloud holds a séance for the benefit of those who are closely associated with him. It is a sort of annual reunion – almost a party in fact.

He had previously asked for two luminous plaques and a red torch to be brought in to the séance room, so we knew there were going to be materializations.

The séance was an evening of laughter and joking. It was not doleful and weird, as our opponents think sittings usually are. Red Cloud insisted on bright conversation. Tenseness would ruin everything he told us right at the beginning, when he spoke through his entranced medium, who sat inside a hastily improvised cabinet.

This was made of four pieces of wood with some curtains draped over the front. It stood about five feet in height. ‘Wendy’s house,’ Estelle’s daughter laughingly called it.
They insisted that I should examine the cabinet and the room, so that I could say I had done so.